Already dim hopes for a McLaren comeback at this weekend’s British Grand Prix appeared to get even dimmer when drivers Jenson Button and Sergio Perez were unable to crack the Top 10 in Friday’s practice speeds at Silverstone.

The duo has yet to claim a podium for the Woking squad, which has been continuously bedeviled by an uncompetitive MP4-28 machine. With that in mind, team principal Martin Whitmarsh has acknowledged that the group has begun moving “quite a lot of resources” toward the creation of their 2014 challenger.

“It’s been a poor season. There has been no simple fix,” Whitmarsh said to the Associated Press on Friday. “The fact is we have a car that is some ways behind the development cycle of the other cars now. We have to be realistic about that. We are going to fight on, but we have to work very hard on next year to make sure we come out competitive.”

While Whitmarsh has hope that McLaren can turn things around in the future, he admitted that this weekend will probably not yield the results that their home fans are hoping to see from them, and British driver Button in particular.

“There are a lot of fans here, loyal fans,’ Whitmarsh said. “They understand you have ups and downs. You don’t want to let them down. We will be doing everything we can to fight tomorrow and the next day. But we’re probably not going give them result that they want and we would want to give them.”

Following practice on Friday, Button indicated that the car’s balance was “reasonable” but that it was still “some way off the pace.” Perez also admitted that the team was “in a similar position to the last race [in Canada], and still quite far from the front.”